Trump's immigration reform raises standards while angering elites

Chicago will sue the Trump administration over its sanctuary city funding threat. This comes less than two weeks after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the DOJ would bar these dangerous sanctuary cities certain funds unless they allow immigration officials access to local jails and give 48 hours' notice before releasing anybody wanted for immigration violations.

Things to Know:

1. RAISE Act Raises Standards for Immigration (and the Ire of Special Interests)
2. Voters in Key Swing States Support Reductions in Immigration, Poll Finds
3. RAISE Act Raises Standards for Immigration (and the Ire of Special Interests) FacebookTwitter

Immigration is a public policy. Public policies are supposed to serve the public interest. U.S. immigration policy does not and has not for a very long time. Last week, Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), with the backing of the White House, attempted to change that by offering legislation that would move America's legal immigration policy away from one of endless family chain migration to a system that selects immigrants based on individual merit.

The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, S. 1720, is not a new idea. The idea for an objective, merit-based selection process, setting annual limits at about half a million a year, has been around for 20 years. S. 1720 provides a legislative vehicle for the recommendations of a bipartisan panel chaired by civil rights icon Barbara Jordan in the 1990s and endorsed by President Bill Clinton.

Narrow interests groups that enjoy political and economic privileges from the current system, at the expense of the public good, opened their wallets and dug in their heels and the Jordan Commission recommendations have been sitting on the shelf collecting dust for the past two decades. Predictably, these same interests are raising a fuss about the RAISE Act.

Despite declining wages for lower skilled workers, cheap labor interests want to preserve the current system which floods the country with more low skilled workers. Groups representing the dozen or so countries that dominate the immigration flow under family chain migration are also crying foul, seeking to preserve their privileged access to green cards.

The onus is now on Congress, which has seen its approval ratings plummet faster than blue collar wages, to take on these narrow interests and implement an immigration policy that actually serves the public interest.